Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase - User contributions [en]

Free Lossless Audio Codec

2006-03-10T23:32:35Z

ShaneCavanaugh: /* Taggers */ +Tag

=What is FLAC?=

Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to [[MP3]], but [[lossless]], meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. "Free" means "Free" - that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain. It also means that the sources for libFLAC and libFLAC++ are available under the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licence.

FLAC compiles on many platforms.

Some claim FLAC is the most widely used lossless compression format on UNIX systems (though it seems more likely that shn retains that honor on all OS platforms).

FLAC files can be placed inside an Ogg container using libOggFLAC and libOggFLAC++.

==Pros==
* Portable to many systems
* Source open and freely licenced
* Hardware support (PhatBox, Kenwood MusicKeg, Rio Karma, etc. See below)
* Streaming support
* Extremely fast decoding
* Supports multichannel and high resolution streams
* Supports [[ReplayGain]]
* Supports cue-sheet (with some limitations)
* Gaining wide use as successor to [[Shorten]]

==Cons==
* Compresses less efficiently than other popular modern compressors ([[Monkey's Audio]], [[OptimFROG]])
* Higher compression modes slow, for little gain over the default setting.

=Players that support FLAC=
For a more complete list see the [http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html FLAC links page].
==Hardware==
===Home stereo===
* [http://www.request.com/us/ AudioReQuest] music servers
* Digital Techniques' "iStereo" [http://www.digitaltechniques.com/M300A_Overview.html M300A Digital Music Player]
* Escient's [http://www.escient.com/ FireBall servers (E2-40/160/300, DVDM-300)]
* [http://www.hermstedt.com/english/hifidelio/hifidelio.html Hifidelio]
* Meda Systems' [http://www.medainc.com/ Bravo servers]
* The [http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/show_floor/product_locator/product_details.asp?prodid=5181 MS300 Music Server] by McIntosh Laboratory
* Olive's [http://www.olive.us/ Symphony] wireless digital music center
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/homeplayer/index.php PhatNoise Home Digital Media Player]
* [http://www.mock.com/receiver/ Rio Reciever] and Dell Digital Audio Receiver
* [http://www.rokulabs.com/products/photobridge/features.php Roku PhotoBridge HD] (with [http://homepage.ntlworld.ie/p.mc.quillan/FLAC_V0.7.zip plugin])
* [http://www.skipjam.com/ SkipJam]'s networked audio/video devices
* [http://www.sonos.com/ Sonos Digital Music System]
* [http://www.slimdevices.com/ Squeezebox2 and Squeezebox 3 (earlier models support via Slimserver)]
* [http://www.z500series.com/ Zensonic Z500 Networked DVD Media Player]

===Car stereo===
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/digitalmediaplayers/kenwood_music_keg.php Kenwood Music Keg]
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/digitalmediaplayers/index.php PhatBox]

===Portable===
* [[Apple iPod]] with [[Rockbox]] firmware
* [[iAudio M3]] and X5
* [[iRiver]] iHP-120/iHP-140 with [[Rockbox]] firmware
* [[Iwod G10]]
* [[Rio Karma]]

==Software==

===Players===
* [http://koti.welho.com/hylinen/apollo/ Apollo]
* [http://cogosx.sourceforge.net Cog] — for Mac OS X
* [[foobar2000]]
* [[JRiver Media Center]]
* [http://fondriest.frederic.free.fr/realisations/lamip/ LAMIP]
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com/ MediaMonkey]
* [http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ MPlayer]
* [http://www.mythtv.org/ MythTV]
* [http://www.quinnware.com/ QCD] ([http://www.quinnware.com/list_plugins.php?type=input plugin])
* [http://www.videolan.org/ VLC]
* [http://www.vuplayer.com/vuplayer.htm VUPlayer]
* [[Winamp]]
* [[Windows Media Player]] and other directshow-based players (MPC, TCMP, RadLight) (with [http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/ Illiminable's directshow filters] or [http://corecodec.org/projects/coreflac CoreFLAC])
* [http://xine.sourceforge.net/ Xine]
* [[XMMS]]
* [http://www.un4seen.com/ XMplay]

===Frontends (Windows) ===
* [http://www.uninformative.com/flacattack/ Flacattack]
* Custom [http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm Windows Frontend] (by Speek)
* [http://www.unifront.boereck.de/ UniversalFront] by Böreck
* [http://home.vxu.se/mdati00/frontah/ Frontah] by Madah
* [http://mareo.monkeydev.org/ Mareo] by Kwambis

===Frontends (Mac) ===
* [http://www.danrules.com/macflac/ MacFLAC]
* [http://www.sbooth.org/Max/ Max]
* [http://members.rogers.com/beamsplitter/ RipBeak]
* [http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952 xACT]

===Converters===
* [http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ dBpowerAMP] Music Converter / Audio Player / CD Writer
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com/ MediaMonkey] Music Manager / Audio Player / CD Writer
* [http://www.germanixsoft.de/ GX:Transcoder] Music converter

===Editors===
* [[Adobe Audition]]

===CD writers/rippers===
* [http://www.ahead.de Ahead Nero Burning Rom]
* [http://arson.sourceforge.net/ Arson]
* [http://www.burnatonce.com/ burnatonce]
* [http://www.burrrn.net Burrrn] Audio CD burner
* [[Exact Audio Copy]] CD Ripper
* [http://cdexos.sourceforge.net CDex] CD ripper
* [http://www.cdwave.com/ CD Wave]

===Taggers===
* [http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/files/Tag.zip Case's Tag] command line tagger
* [http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/ The GodFather] Tagger / Music manager
* [http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html Mp3tag] Universal Tag Editor
* [http://sbooth.org/Tag/ Tag] — for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

===Other tools===
* [http://www.burrrn.net/mrq/ Mr. QuestionMan]
* [http://www.bitattack.ro/ai/ Audio Identifier]
* [http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ mkvtoolnix] - tool to multiplex FLAC streams inside the Matroska container

...and many more; see the [http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#software FLAC software section] and [http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html#extras download section] for a more comprehensive list.

=Frequently Asked Questions=

''Question:'' Does the compression level affect decompression speed?

''Short Answer'': No.

''Long Answer'': In truth, the compression level does affect the decompression speed, but the difference between the various compress levels can barely be measured and is too small to be noticed, even on low-end machines.

''Question:'' What is the best compression level for encoding my music?

''Short Answer'': The default setting, 5.

''Long Answer'': Encoding at the default setting will give the best balance between compression and encoding speed. Encoding at 8 can more than quadruple the encoding time, while having an insignificant effect on compression.

See also: [http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html FLAC FAQ]

=Addtional Reading=
* [http://flac.sourceforge.net FLAC Project Webpage]
* [http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html Download]
* [http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=261 Rio Karma]
* [http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm Speek's Comparison of lossless audio compressors]
* [[Lossless comparison|Lossless Codec Comparison]] by Rjamorim
* [http://people.ucsc.edu/~rswilson/flactest Omion's FLAC "File Size vs. Decoding Speed" test] - a very thorough test on [[FLAC#Frequently_Asked_Questions|the influence of the chosen encoding level on the decoding speed of FLAC]]; the only one so far to have covered FLAC's --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level to this extent as well.

Free Lossless Audio Codec

2006-03-10T23:31:17Z

ShaneCavanaugh: /* Players */ +cog

=What is FLAC?=

Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to [[MP3]], but [[lossless]], meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. "Free" means "Free" - that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain. It also means that the sources for libFLAC and libFLAC++ are available under the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licence.

FLAC compiles on many platforms.

Some claim FLAC is the most widely used lossless compression format on UNIX systems (though it seems more likely that shn retains that honor on all OS platforms).

FLAC files can be placed inside an Ogg container using libOggFLAC and libOggFLAC++.

==Pros==
* Portable to many systems
* Source open and freely licenced
* Hardware support (PhatBox, Kenwood MusicKeg, Rio Karma, etc. See below)
* Streaming support
* Extremely fast decoding
* Supports multichannel and high resolution streams
* Supports [[ReplayGain]]
* Supports cue-sheet (with some limitations)
* Gaining wide use as successor to [[Shorten]]

==Cons==
* Compresses less efficiently than other popular modern compressors ([[Monkey's Audio]], [[OptimFROG]])
* Higher compression modes slow, for little gain over the default setting.

=Players that support FLAC=
For a more complete list see the [http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html FLAC links page].
==Hardware==
===Home stereo===
* [http://www.request.com/us/ AudioReQuest] music servers
* Digital Techniques' "iStereo" [http://www.digitaltechniques.com/M300A_Overview.html M300A Digital Music Player]
* Escient's [http://www.escient.com/ FireBall servers (E2-40/160/300, DVDM-300)]
* [http://www.hermstedt.com/english/hifidelio/hifidelio.html Hifidelio]
* Meda Systems' [http://www.medainc.com/ Bravo servers]
* The [http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/show_floor/product_locator/product_details.asp?prodid=5181 MS300 Music Server] by McIntosh Laboratory
* Olive's [http://www.olive.us/ Symphony] wireless digital music center
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/homeplayer/index.php PhatNoise Home Digital Media Player]
* [http://www.mock.com/receiver/ Rio Reciever] and Dell Digital Audio Receiver
* [http://www.rokulabs.com/products/photobridge/features.php Roku PhotoBridge HD] (with [http://homepage.ntlworld.ie/p.mc.quillan/FLAC_V0.7.zip plugin])
* [http://www.skipjam.com/ SkipJam]'s networked audio/video devices
* [http://www.sonos.com/ Sonos Digital Music System]
* [http://www.slimdevices.com/ Squeezebox2 and Squeezebox 3 (earlier models support via Slimserver)]
* [http://www.z500series.com/ Zensonic Z500 Networked DVD Media Player]

===Car stereo===
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/digitalmediaplayers/kenwood_music_keg.php Kenwood Music Keg]
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/digitalmediaplayers/index.php PhatBox]

===Portable===
* [[Apple iPod]] with [[Rockbox]] firmware
* [[iAudio M3]] and X5
* [[iRiver]] iHP-120/iHP-140 with [[Rockbox]] firmware
* [[Iwod G10]]
* [[Rio Karma]]

==Software==

===Players===
* [http://koti.welho.com/hylinen/apollo/ Apollo]
* [http://cogosx.sourceforge.net Cog] — for Mac OS X
* [[foobar2000]]
* [[JRiver Media Center]]
* [http://fondriest.frederic.free.fr/realisations/lamip/ LAMIP]
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com/ MediaMonkey]
* [http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ MPlayer]
* [http://www.mythtv.org/ MythTV]
* [http://www.quinnware.com/ QCD] ([http://www.quinnware.com/list_plugins.php?type=input plugin])
* [http://www.videolan.org/ VLC]
* [http://www.vuplayer.com/vuplayer.htm VUPlayer]
* [[Winamp]]
* [[Windows Media Player]] and other directshow-based players (MPC, TCMP, RadLight) (with [http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/ Illiminable's directshow filters] or [http://corecodec.org/projects/coreflac CoreFLAC])
* [http://xine.sourceforge.net/ Xine]
* [[XMMS]]
* [http://www.un4seen.com/ XMplay]

===Frontends (Windows) ===
* [http://www.uninformative.com/flacattack/ Flacattack]
* Custom [http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm Windows Frontend] (by Speek)
* [http://www.unifront.boereck.de/ UniversalFront] by Böreck
* [http://home.vxu.se/mdati00/frontah/ Frontah] by Madah
* [http://mareo.monkeydev.org/ Mareo] by Kwambis

===Frontends (Mac) ===
* [http://www.danrules.com/macflac/ MacFLAC]
* [http://www.sbooth.org/Max/ Max]
* [http://members.rogers.com/beamsplitter/ RipBeak]
* [http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952 xACT]

===Converters===
* [http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ dBpowerAMP] Music Converter / Audio Player / CD Writer
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com/ MediaMonkey] Music Manager / Audio Player / CD Writer
* [http://www.germanixsoft.de/ GX:Transcoder] Music converter

===Editors===
* [[Adobe Audition]]

===CD writers/rippers===
* [http://www.ahead.de Ahead Nero Burning Rom]
* [http://arson.sourceforge.net/ Arson]
* [http://www.burnatonce.com/ burnatonce]
* [http://www.burrrn.net Burrrn] Audio CD burner
* [[Exact Audio Copy]] CD Ripper
* [http://cdexos.sourceforge.net CDex] CD ripper
* [http://www.cdwave.com/ CD Wave]

===Taggers===
* [http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html Mp3tag] Universal Tag Editor
* [http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/ The GodFather] Tagger / Music manager
* [http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/files/Tag.zip Case's Tag] command line tagger

===Other tools===
* [http://www.burrrn.net/mrq/ Mr. QuestionMan]
* [http://www.bitattack.ro/ai/ Audio Identifier]
* [http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ mkvtoolnix] - tool to multiplex FLAC streams inside the Matroska container

...and many more; see the [http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#software FLAC software section] and [http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html#extras download section] for a more comprehensive list.

=Frequently Asked Questions=

''Question:'' Does the compression level affect decompression speed?

''Short Answer'': No.

''Long Answer'': In truth, the compression level does affect the decompression speed, but the difference between the various compress levels can barely be measured and is too small to be noticed, even on low-end machines.

''Question:'' What is the best compression level for encoding my music?

''Short Answer'': The default setting, 5.

''Long Answer'': Encoding at the default setting will give the best balance between compression and encoding speed. Encoding at 8 can more than quadruple the encoding time, while having an insignificant effect on compression.

See also: [http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html FLAC FAQ]

=Addtional Reading=
* [http://flac.sourceforge.net FLAC Project Webpage]
* [http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html Download]
* [http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=261 Rio Karma]
* [http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm Speek's Comparison of lossless audio compressors]
* [[Lossless comparison|Lossless Codec Comparison]] by Rjamorim
* [http://people.ucsc.edu/~rswilson/flactest Omion's FLAC "File Size vs. Decoding Speed" test] - a very thorough test on [[FLAC#Frequently_Asked_Questions|the influence of the chosen encoding level on the decoding speed of FLAC]]; the only one so far to have covered FLAC's --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level to this extent as well.

Free Lossless Audio Codec

2006-02-22T06:46:45Z

ShaneCavanaugh: /* Frontends (Mac) */ +Max

=What is FLAC?=

Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to [[MP3]], but [[lossless]], meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. "Free" means "Free" - that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain. It also means that the sources for libFLAC and libFLAC++ are available under the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licence.

FLAC compiles on many platforms.

Some claim FLAC is the most widely used lossless compression format on UNIX systems (though it seems more likely that shn retains that honor on all OS platforms).

FLAC files can be placed inside an Ogg container using libOggFLAC and libOggFLAC++.

==Pros==
* Portable to many systems
* Source open and freely licenced
* Hardware support (PhatBox, Kenwood MusicKeg, Rio Karma, etc. See below)
* Streaming support
* Extremely fast decoding
* Supports multichannel and high resolution streams
* Supports [[ReplayGain]]
* Supports cue-sheet (with some limitations)
* Gaining wide use as successor to [[Shorten]]

==Cons==
* Compresses less efficiently than other popular modern compressors ([[Monkey's Audio]], [[OptimFROG]])
* Higher compression modes slow, for little gain over the default setting.

=Players that support FLAC=
For a more complete list see the [http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html FLAC links page].
==Hardware==
===Home stereo===
* [http://www.request.com/us/ AudioReQuest] music servers
* Digital Techniques' "iStereo" [http://www.digitaltechniques.com/M300A_Overview.html M300A Digital Music Player]
* Escient's [http://www.escient.com/ FireBall servers (E2-40/160/300, DVDM-300)]
* [http://www.hermstedt.com/english/hifidelio/hifidelio.html Hifidelio]
* Meda Systems' [http://www.medainc.com/ Bravo servers]
* The [http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/show_floor/product_locator/product_details.asp?prodid=5181 MS300 Music Server] by McIntosh Laboratory
* Olive's [http://www.olive.us/ Symphony] wireless digital music center
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/homeplayer/index.php PhatNoise Home Digital Media Player]
* [http://www.mock.com/receiver/ Rio Reciever] and Dell Digital Audio Receiver
* [http://www.rokulabs.com/products/photobridge/features.php Roku PhotoBridge HD] (with [http://homepage.ntlworld.ie/p.mc.quillan/FLAC_V0.7.zip plugin])
* [http://www.skipjam.com/ SkipJam]'s networked audio/video devices
* [http://www.sonos.com/ Sonos Digital Music System]
* [http://www.slimdevices.com/ Squeezebox2 and Squeezebox 3 (earlier models support via Slimserver)]
* [http://www.z500series.com/ Zensonic Z500 Networked DVD Media Player]

===Car stereo===
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/digitalmediaplayers/kenwood_music_keg.php Kenwood Music Keg]
* [http://www.phatnoise.com/products/digitalmediaplayers/index.php PhatBox]

===Portable===
* [[Apple iPod]] with [[Rockbox]] firmware
* [[iAudio M3]] and X5
* [[iRiver]] iHP-120/iHP-140 with [[Rockbox]] firmware
* [[Iwod G10]]
* [[Rio Karma]]

==Software==

===Players===
* [http://koti.welho.com/hylinen/apollo/ Apollo]
* [[foobar2000]]
* [[JRiver Media Center]]
* [http://fondriest.frederic.free.fr/realisations/lamip/ LAMIP]
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com/ MediaMonkey]
* [http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ MPlayer]
* [http://www.mythtv.org/ MythTV]
* [http://www.quinnware.com/ QCD] ([http://www.quinnware.com/list_plugins.php?type=input plugin])
* [http://www.videolan.org/ VLC]
* [http://www.vuplayer.com/vuplayer.htm VUPlayer]
* [[Winamp]]
* [[Windows Media Player]] and other directshow-based players (MPC, TCMP, RadLight) (with [http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/ Illiminable's directshow filters] or [http://corecodec.org/projects/coreflac CoreFLAC])
* [http://xine.sourceforge.net/ Xine]
* [[XMMS]]
* [http://www.un4seen.com/ XMplay]

===Frontends (Windows) ===
* [http://www.uninformative.com/flacattack/ Flacattack]
* Custom [http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm Windows Frontend] (by Speek)
* [http://www.unifront.boereck.de/ UniversalFront] by Böreck
* [http://home.vxu.se/mdati00/frontah/ Frontah] by Madah
* [http://mareo.monkeydev.org/ Mareo] by Kwambis

===Frontends (Mac) ===
* [http://www.danrules.com/macflac/ MacFLAC]
* [http://www.sbooth.org/Max/ Max]
* [http://members.rogers.com/beamsplitter/ RipBeak]
* [http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952 xACT]

===Converters===
* [http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ dBpowerAMP] Music Converter / Audio Player / CD Writer
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com/ MediaMonkey] Music Manager / Audio Player / CD Writer
* [http://www.germanixsoft.de/ GX:Transcoder] Music converter

===Editors===
* [[Adobe Audition]]

===CD writers/rippers===
* [http://www.ahead.de Ahead Nero Burning Rom]
* [http://arson.sourceforge.net/ Arson]
* [http://www.burnatonce.com/ burnatonce]
* [http://www.burrrn.net Burrrn] Audio CD burner
* [[Exact Audio Copy]] CD Ripper
* [http://cdexos.sourceforge.net CDex] CD ripper
* [http://www.cdwave.com/ CD Wave]

===Taggers===
* [http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html Mp3tag] Universal Tag Editor
* [http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/ The GodFather] Tagger / Music manager
* [http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/files/Tag.zip Case's Tag] command line tagger

===Other tools===
* [http://www.burrrn.net/mrq/ Mr. QuestionMan]
* [http://www.bitattack.ro/ai/ Audio Identifier]
* [http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ mkvtoolnix] - tool to multiplex FLAC streams inside the Matroska container

...and many more; see the [http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#software FLAC software section] and [http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html#extras download section] for a more comprehensive list.

=Frequently Asked Questions=

''Question:'' Does the compression level affect decompression speed?

''Short Answer'': No.

''Long Answer'': In truth, the compression level does affect the decompression speed, but the difference between the various compress levels can barely be measured and is too small to be noticed, even on low-end machines.

''Question:'' What is the best compression level for encoding my music?

''Short Answer'': The default setting, 5.

''Long Answer'': Encoding at the default setting will give the best balance between compression and encoding speed. Encoding at 8 can more than quadruple the encoding time, while having an insignificant effect on compression.

See also: [http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html FLAC FAQ]

=Addtional Reading=
* [http://flac.sourceforge.net FLAC Project Webpage]
* [http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html Download]
* [http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=261 Rio Karma]
* [http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm Speek's Comparison of lossless audio compressors]
* [[Lossless comparison|Lossless Codec Comparison]] by Rjamorim
* [http://people.ucsc.edu/~rswilson/flactest Omion's FLAC "File Size vs. Decoding Speed" test] - a very thorough test on [[FLAC#Frequently_Asked_Questions|the influence of the chosen encoding level on the decoding speed of FLAC]]; the only one so far to have covered FLAC's --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level to this extent as well.